Scion iQ

Overview

Competitors

Full Review

2012

2015 model shown

Tested: 2012 Scion iQ

Test Location: Chelsea Proving Grounds (Chelsea, MI) - February 2012

EPA

0-60

Horsepower

Top Speed

36/37 mpg

9.6 sec

94 hp

101 mph

Overview:
The diminutive iQ is an exercise in efficient packaging, and even though there are four seats inside, that doesn’t mean they’re all usable. The interior is comfortable for two, with little room for much else. The iQ’s size means it can be easily parked just about anywhere, but the 1.3-liter four and the power-sapping continuously variable transmission mean driving between parking spots is unpleasant, despite light and accurate steering, which is the only gratifying part of the experience. Instrumented Test – 2012 Scion iQ »

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Late for Class: The tiny Scion arrives tardy to a silly segment, and all of America becomes a comedian.

Manufacturers are so jittery about peddling micro subcompacts that they’ve resorted to intellectual flattery. A thinking person would surely have purchased a TH!NK, at least before Ford lost faith in its Norwegian electric-car experiment and expelled it from class. If you’re the brainy sort, you’d naturally opt for a Smart Fortwo, recently suspended by Roger Penske and sent off to see the stern principal, Mr. Daimler. And now comes the Mensa bunch, whose IQs would surely route them to an iQ, at least if this latest Scion can find a class that will accept its grades. For the nonce, the iQ is standing in the A-segment hall, late for class, occasionally tapping timorously on the homeroom door.

“Can I come in, please?”

“I dunno. How come you’re so short?”

Short? Yes, indeed. The iQ is 10 feet long. If you stood it on its tail, its nose would delicately scrape an NBA basketball rim, then, of course, the car would fall over and knock welts in the hardwood. Ten is a significant number. Bo Derek was a 10, and 10 is when many boomers go to bed. The iQ is exactly 12 inches longer than a pro billiard table, yet if you deployed four persons atop a billiard table—as you might array inside an iQ—you’d probably have the basis for an adult video. The iQ is 19.5 inches shorter than a Fiat 500. The iQ is three feet longer than the average casket, and you simply cannot fit four bodies into one casket, although if you did, the casket’s occupants presumably would not complain, yet the iQ’s probably would. If you stick your arm 21 inches out the iQ’s side window, you can touch the taillights, although it will make your shoulder hurt, and the Ann Arbor police don’t find it funny at all.

“Hey, dude, where’s the rest of it?” shouted a pedestrian. Riotously ingenious, sir. First time we’ve heard that one.

The iQ’s electric power steering is light, accurate, and weights up predictably. It’s gratifying, actually. Combine that with a 6.6-foot wheelbase and you wind up with a turning diameter of less than 26 feet. During the first few days of iQ-dom, you will miss every single apex because turn-in isn’t just right damn now, it’s about four months premature. Onlookers will applaud your masterful hand-brake turns, even though you’ve never touched the hand brake. Of course, the midget wheelbase isn’t exactly an ally on interstates, where the iQ’s sense of straight ahead exhibits many of the symptoms of ADHD.

The ride is acceptably forgiving, although body motions—come on, what body?—could be better controlled. And the 16-inch Goodyears—which, as actual adult-size rubber, do much to mitigate the iQ’s acute cuteness—offer up a useful 0.81 g before succumbing to the sort of understeer known only to captains of oil freighters. We conducted two zesty 14-mile laps around our handling loop—more fun than we expected, frankly—before conducting an interior lap of Chelsea, Michigan’s Ugly Dog vodka distillery, which included the sort of lapping that rendered us unfit for further testing.

The iQ’s 1.3-liter inline-four produces 94 horsepower and is asked to serve little more than a ton of automobile, if that’s what this is. Which makes you wonder why 60 mph arrives in a lethargic 9.6 seconds. At least that’s quicker than the CVT-equipped Nissan Versa we tested last November. Oh, boy. Did someone mention the “c” word?

In America, the iQ is offered only with a CVT because, as a Scion rep puts it, “the intended buyer will use this car in tight urban areas with hills and tight parking, and we are predicting most buyers will want a simple transmission.” Fine, but “simple” has two meanings. When you nail the throttle, the iQ’s engine annoyingly screams to, then lingers at, 5500 rpm, where the trans has been programmed to impersonate a three-speed automatic, falling twice to 4800 rpm or so—see, I’m shifting now, don’t you believe me?—right when those 700 revs would have been awfully handy for forward progress. It’s as if the development engineers couldn’t stand the yowling, either, and thus concocted a pair of brief mechanical timeouts. At idle and at a 70-mph cruise, the iQ is noisier than any of the one-size-larger B-segment econocars we tested last November. At WOT, it’s as noisy as the Versa.

There are three transmission modes: There’s the standard “D” (we think it stands for “defeated”). Then there’s “S” (maybe “sedentary”?), which tacks on a few-hundred bonus revs at all times and murders mpg. Then there’s “B” (“beleaguered”?), which simply allows the engine to hang at its 6300-rpm redline. We drove all the way through the quarter-mile in “beleaguered,” as painful as it was. Still, that mode remains useful for acquiring a little engine braking on, say, exit ramps, because engine braking is otherwise AWOL. We’d like to tell you that there are few cars that so perpetually feel as if they’re always in the wrong gear, but, given the CVT’s gearlessness, we can’t. Droning? Imagine you’re in an open bass boat powered by a tiny two-stroke and you’re halfway across Twenty Mile Lake, and now you’re eyeing the soggy newspaper wrapped around the bait box, wondering if it’s too wet to fashion into earplugs.

“You get the license of the truck that hit you?” Too rich, sir. Too rich.

“I didn’t know that Disney sold cars!” Hilarious, ma’am. And how’s your career as a stand-up comic?

And to the guy who insisted that the iQ’s rear drum brakes looked like “hockey pucks,” well, pal, you can just go stick your . . . wait a sec. They do look like hockey pucks. Did we mention that the iQ’s hood, at its deepest point, extends only 18 inches and that exactly none of it is visible to the driver?

The iQ’s front seats are amorphous chaise longues, perhaps purchased at Costco for a freshman dorm, and if they were intended to align the driver with any primary controls, it wasn’t immediately obvious. What’s startling is that the windshield and side windows are full-scale items, so that once the driver is in place, the iQ lends no particular perception of smallness. The Smart performs that same illusion, by the way.

Opening the iQ’s little hatch is like opening a music box. You expect to hear a syrupy rendition of the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy” on a glass armonica. Folded, the seatbacks allow a flat, 25-by-37-inch cargo ­galley—17 cubic feet, a clever feat o’ packaging—into which we managed to cram eight paper bags full of Kroger groceries, which, by the way, is not enough for Thanksgiving. Two kids could tolerate the back seat for 30 minutes and two adults for 10 minutes, but then the grown-ups would have to get married. Behind the rear wheels are spats that flare out, looking like bloomers that have been inflated from below by a blast of warm subway air. On the iQ, the only oversize item is each door, 51 inches long, scything open and into the flanks of anything parked adjacent. An odd car, we tell you. Odd.

Inside, there are no coat hooks. No glove box, either. If there were a glove box, it would contain one thing only: the intake plenum. For a while, one of us—me—had trouble activating the radio, because I did not realize I first had to push a button labeled “AV.” Several colleagues immediately suggested that a good story angle would be for the ­University of Michigan psychology department to measure my IQ versus the iQ’s. As if I’m going to fall for that one again.

While in our merciless possession, this commuter/errand hopper served up a disappointing 31 mpg, which translates to a range of 264 miles. Do you recall the 1840-pound 1998 Chevrolet Metro—the Scion of its day—that we tested in 2009? It returned 42 mpg. Food for thought. Junk food.

You can buy an iQ—oh, wouldn’t we all buy a big one if we could?—for $15,995, although our test car fetched a somewhat cautionary $19,841. For that sum, what comes to mind is that line from Jaws: “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” On the other hand, if Toyota’s goal was to toss the Smart like chum to the sharks, well, mission accomplished. Still, it’s ironic that both the iQ and the Smart are rendered so deaf and dumb by traitorous transmissions. Late to class, the iQ certainly had a chance to do its homework, but apparently Scion’s pet schnauzer ate it instead. Of the dinkoid-­segment cars available in America, at least the iQ is the least toylike.

You might think a TH!NK would demonstrate your intelligence, or you might want to show your IQ by buying a Smart, but you’ll prove you’re smart by flaunting your iQ. You might say that. We wouldn’t. But you might.